Philosophy Now Forum

Right and wrong has its place within ethics which is not binary. Factual right and wrong is another matter as in maths. In any case the attack on Israel was so extreme it is the very reason why Israel should not be left to make retribution. The USA and GB with NATO and UN should have control.

Most binary debates in the Media are little better than battles between bigots. Thousands on the streets for Palestine and then thousands for Israel. Palestine-Israel is a unitary problem that has lasted exactly 100 years. Agreement as even the Oslo Accord has barely been possible. Persecution both ...

Freedom Freedom is a moral value that must apply to human beings from a positive to a negative way. But human beings are not perambulating plates of meat. Humanity must be defined by values. Therefore freedom relates to other values, in a positive or negative way. Overall values are neutral. There i...

Client State Politics is a humbug term. The real term should be Social Ethics. Isreal is little better than a Client State of the USA. What the country is in accepted international law signifies little in reality. The United Nations or failing that such a force as NATO should be in charge of securit...

Dictionaries Perhaps the most significant point about dictionaries is that they are not works of philosophy. And if they were used that way, it would spell the end of philosophy, with dictionaries no more than religious tracts. They indicate how words are presently used, and how they were used, with...

Free Speech As with other such fundamentalist phrases – there is no such thing as absolute free speech, in any category of ethical society. But, if we pretend to live in a responsibly-altruist democracy, then no person or group or faction, should be denied a public platform. The only conditions bein...

What is rather vacuously referred to as the Woke Generation will inherit the Earth or what is left of it. Forget the vacuous politics of Left and Right. In the lead up to another General Election they might at least familiarise themselves with the term Kleptocracy. It appears to be the way our world...

A History of Masculinity This book by Ivan Jablonka is no doubt a good global history of the subect, and the feminine. It is barely a book of philosophy, since it would appear simply to set female freedom and bondage against each other, with the obvious conclusion that there should be freedom and eq...

Migrant For hundreds of years at least, the world has suffered from uncontrolled migration to places already populated by stable communities of people and stable ecosystems. Diversity in the world being crushed by the mass. In a world based on responsible altruist communities, or countries, a Migran...

If we educate children MERELY to obey the law, then we are not a democracy. If we also do so MERELY to further their own ambitions and profit, then we are not an Altruist society’ If we educate children with the Responsibility to benefit the community and society, then we are a Responsible – Altruis...

Education The United Nations provides a catalogue of Human Rights, including that of education for the child. Altruistically, that is quite right. The United Nations does not specifically provide a list of Duties or Responsibilities. It may be said that the education as a right necessitates provisio...

What this may show is the folly of taking values in isolation. Values must be taken holistically or in relation to each other. In which case there is a place for self sacrifice in particular situations. But as a general value for society, it would be difficult to find another word than altruism to d...

Love? The English Bible appears to suffer from one signal fault. It employs English words that do not always correlate adequately with the words and langauages employed two thousand years ago. In partcular Love, as what has become a very loose and random term today, whereas Jesus employed the term, ...

Basis of Virtue If God exists and what he arbitrarily says is the basis of virtue, then he may determine that women are subservient to men, or he may not, or that we may have serfs or not. If God is an altruist, then he will be guided by that value. If he is a libertarian, he will be guided by that ...

For goodness sake, while there is still time for human survival, stop dualistic or binary thinking. A fundamental state of nature with Virtue v Vice; Tyranny v Democracy; Communism v Capitalism. And all the other semi-political fanciful terms. I am inclined to think that even Jesus of Nazareth was n...